Sir Viv Lashes Out
Sat, Apr 23, '05
Former West Indies chief selector this week lashed out in insularity and interference by senior members of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) and described his two-year tenure as the equivalent of navigating through a "war zone."
Deeply hurt by the way he was treated during his time as chairman of the senior selection panel, the 'Master Blaster' accused Jamaica cricket boss Jackie Hendriks of interfering and playing politics with the panel's work.
He said Hendriks interfered on two occasions to demand answers from a selector when Chris Gayle was dropped in 2003 and when Marlon Samuels was sent home from India for breaking curfew. Gayle's omission centred around the opener's decision to make himself unavailable for the Carib Beer finals to go play in the Double-Wicket World Cup in St Lucia.
According to Richards, Hendriks was looking to get re-elected as the president of the JCA, and because of that, "that same Mr. Hendriks asked questions, not of me but of Joey Carew, as to why we dropped Chris Gayle, why we want to send Marlon Samuels home."
"There are certain rapports which go on between these individuals. He would never ask me those questions."
"Politics, man. I tell you, politics, and you can write that in huge, bold, black letters," Richards declared.
"Certainly, those two years as chairman...I've never been to Russia. I've never been to East Germany. I never spent time with the CIA. I never spent time with MI5, MI6, but I felt in that environment working for the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB). It was very, very nasty," Richards fumed.
"I felt that in the past, individuals were picking and choosing which match they would like to be in and, as chairman of selectors, I was going to have none of that," he said.
In a clear reference to new coach/czar Bennett King, Richards added: "I didn?t come all the way from Australia to make these decisions, only a short trip from Antigua to Barbados at the time, to have made that decision that we leave all these individuals out until we believed and were satisfied enough that they were fully committed to playing for West Indies cricket and that hasn?t changed in my view."
Referring to the incident in India when Samuels was sent home, Richards accused then WICB president Wes Hall of undermining the work of the tour management. "We had a disciplinary committee meeting and we felt that the opportunity would've been right for us to send the right message. We did, but you had all the various board members getting on board."
"You cannot stay thousands of miles away when we are in India and pass judgment on whether we are doing it right or not," Richards lamented.
He accused the WICB of major blunders that have hurt the game in the region and said he was shoved out the door because of his hard-nosed attempts to clean up the mess.
"This is some of the stuff which has come to hit me. They are saying that I was this hardcase individual. I was this individual who never had respect for the individuals? views and things like that. But when you have a team which was just basically disintegrating, we had to make some moves and I tried them. I tried my very best."
"We have guys on this team who may be around for a long time ? guys who may help to take us back to where we were once upon a time. After what has happened recently, however, they will have no respect for these board members, and man, if players don't have respect for board members what can we expect," Richards declared.
Richards also lashed out at WIPA president Dinanath Ramnarine who he said was always hanging around the West Indies dressing room just before a Test match.
Ramnarine was publicly critical of Richards attitude towards players and alleged that the legendary batsman had "verbally belittled" several cricketers.
Contacted by the Jamaica Gleaner newspaper, Hendriks declined to comment on the accusations. "That is his opinion. I respect Mr. Richards, very, very highly and I don't think it is necessary to reply to this."
The WICB also declined comment, according to the Barbados Nation.